Courtesy photo
Mary Ulinski, who ran in the Boston Marathon on Monday poses with Claire, a Boston lawyer, and Nestor, a grad student from the Dominican Republic at Northeastern. According to the posting on Mary's Facebook page, Claire and Nestor

DOVER — As she approached mile marker 25, Dover resident Mary Ulinski didn't know what to make of the odd scene developing along the Boston Marathon route.

Ulinski was nearing the finish line for the seventh time in her life when police officers and people in military uniforms started shouting to clear the street. Vehicles with blaring sirens followed them.

Ulinski dedicated this year's run to the memory of her late husband, another marathon runner who suffered from multiple myeloma, a form of cancer. She was looking forward to reaching mile marker 25, where spectators affiliated with a multiple myeloma charity group were planning to cheer her on. Ulinski's son was also planning to greet her at the finish line, after cheering on Ulinski's daughter, Brit, who had finished the race about 20 minutes earlier.

Instead, Ulinski and the other racers received a warning to stay away from the finish line. The marathon was over.

“They said, 'It stops here,' and gave everyone approaching that area a Mylar blanket to wrap themselves in,” she remembered.

Minutes earlier, two bombs had detonated without warning on a Boston sidewalk, killing at least three people and wounding dozens more.

Ulinski, 68, found herself enveloped in a disaster, miles from home, with no money, few belongings and no way to reach her loved ones.

“I was very lucky to meet up with a couple of people who helped me out,” she remembered. “There was a student, a grad student from Northeastern, from the Dominican Republican — his name was Nestor — and a gal who was Claire, who was a lawyer in Boston. The two of them used their phones to get me in touch with my son who was going to meet me,” she said.

After walking for about half an hour, she reached an MBTA train station and headed away from the scene.

“I don't know what other people would be doing that were behind me,” she said. “There were so many. And I passed quite a few that had really hit the wall and they were having a tough time. You know, I can't imagine how all these people fared after me. I was just so lucky to meet these two people.”

On the other side of the race course, Ulinski's daughter, Brit, had just finished posing for family pictures when the bombs went off.

“We heard the first one and the second one and then everybody just went totally silent, and didn't know what to think,” she recalled.

Along with her husband and her baby, Brit headed to a nearby parking garage, where the family learned of the circumstances at the finish line. Recalling the event on Monday night, her thoughts remained on the spectators who lined the streets as she approached the finish line.

“To think that those poor people had been cheering me on less than an hour ago — it was awful,” she said.

Dover race announcer Andy Schachat was among those caught in the horror that unfolded in downtown Boston during the annual marathon. Reached by phone early Monday evening, Schachat said he was about 200 yards away from the finish line when two explosions wounded dozens of people, including spectators.

“I saw the first explosion, which was a very loud noise, and a big puff of white smoke,” Schachat recalled. “My initial reaction was it must be some sort of electric transformer blowing because of all the electrical equipment that's used at the finish line. Seconds later, a second bomb, a second explosion occurred further up in front of the finish line, and it was the same type of white smoke and loud noise, and we all realized that it was not a transformer. People started running everywhere away from the finish line. The police and race personnel rushed to get to the injured and also to keep other people away as much as possible.”

Schachat, who has reported on as many as 1,000 road races in his career, said he was left in a state of shock and disbelief when the atmosphere at Boston's premier race event was shattered. In the moments that followed, Schachat said he watched as people were taken in wheelchairs toward the race's medical tent, some covered in blood. Schachat left his location at Boylston Street and Dartmouth Street, about two blocks from the blast, and moved toward the Copley Plaza Hotel, where journalists gathered in the afternoon.

“The Boston Marathon is supposed to be the most fun day of the year for the New England running community. It turned into one of the worst days of our lives.”

Another runner who finished before the explosions was Nottingham resident Brandon Newbould, who was the top finisher from New Hampshire. Schachat said Newbould had been lying down and resting when the bombs went off.

“He was obviously visibly shaken and quite upset at what had happened,” Schachat said.

Rochester massage therapist Michelle Zaydon was once again volunteering to help assist runners at this year's marathon when she heard the explosions. Zaydon, who was participated in the event for 14 years, was inside a tent near the public library at the time. Many of the elite runners had already completed the course, and those who remained included a bulk of the people raising funds for charity, she said.

“I was working on a runner and heard the explosion and took two steps to my left and peeked out the opening of the event tent and could see just huge amounts of smoke coming up,” she said, “and as I'm standing there, another explosion went off, and they were big explosions. It was not light sounding. Nothing like a firecracker. It was the ground-shaking type of explosion.”

At the time, some of the runners in the tent were still waiting to find family members who were seated in the grandstand. A few became hysterical as they waited for news of what had happened. The entire group was evacuated about five minutes later.

“They said, 'Everybody, you gotta get out,” she remembered. “The place is not secure.'”

Nearby, her husband, John Zaydon, was watching in the crowd with her father and her uncle. They had just returned from a trip to their parked car, and were about four blocks away from the finish line. They watched as dozens of ambulances began streaming toward Copley Plaza.

Soon after, runners began approaching from the opposite direction, some with tears in their eyes.

“The way I saw the people running reminded me of 911,” he said. “ It brought back a lot of memories.”

Bill Buckley, 50, and his wife Robin Buckley, 44, attended this year's marathon with members of the Rochester Runner's Club. He was about half a mile from the finish line when the race came to a halt. At the start of the race, Buckley was disappointed to find that an injury earlier in the week seemed to be hampering his performance. The Boston Marathon is “every runner's dream,” he said, and Buckley was running the course for his first time.

By Monday evening, Buckley no longer regretted the injury.

“If I hadn't hurt my leg, I would have been probably 30 minutes faster than I was today, and I could have been right there,” he said.

The fear that encircled the marathon route Monday rippled throughout the city. Ben Polichronopoulos, of South Berwick, Maine, had just left a baseball game at Fenway Park when the explosions occurred. He was en route to Boston Beer Works on Brookline Avenue and saw patrons jump up to watch CNN on the big screen televisions at the bar.

“Very weird atmosphere here,” Polichronopoulos said when he was reached inside the bar. He said the restaurant was very quiet and that many people had left, or were on their phones making sure friends were OK. The bar began asking patrons to return home around 4:30 p.m.

“I personally don't know how to feel,” he said during a phone call. “Lots of people are sad and very upset at the same time.”

Grace Bourey, a 22-year-old nanny from Portland, Maine, was taking care of a 5-year-old child at the time of the explosions. She took the child to Boloco, a burrito restaurant on Boylston Street, around 2:45 p.m.

“I heard two huge explosions right outside and we all ran to the windows and the manager told us to get back from the windows, and people started running inside the building and tons of people were running down Boylston Street, pass(ing) the windows and screaming,” she wrote. “And we closed all the doors and windows and stayed inside and turned on the news and they were playing raw live footage from the scene before they had time to edit it and the street was covered in blood.”

She said that after about 10 minutes, she went outside and saw people throwing tables and water coolers out of the street so the ambulances could get through. The police were yelling at the crowds to get away.

Bourey waited until about 5:30 p.m. to walk home. She said she had to take back alleys home because Commonwealth Avenue was shut down, full of fire trucks.

“I ran into this woman who was shaking and crying by herself and said her friend was at the finish line and she doesn't know what happened,” Bourey wrote. “That was what really got me, people were walking around crying. It was horrifying.”
Foster's staff writers John Doyle, Michelle Kingston and Jim Haddadin contributed to this report.